Free Republic

"We do not want to have any more press conferences announcing arrests of people accused of murder. I've done too many of those as mayor," Taveras said Thursday. That's why local leaders secured a $150,000 grant to help curb gang violence in the city of Providence as part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods program. Federal funding will go toward targeting "impact players" on the streets. The city will hire so-called street workers who will spend time getting to know crime-prone areas and work on preventing gang members from turning to violence. Providence has received the grant in years past. Taveras...

A former Social Security official has pleaded guilty to identity theft on accusations he used information from the federal agency's database and took more than $160,000 of a Coventry man's stock investments. ... Hurst, who was assistant district manager for the Social Security Administration in Warwick, used a Social Security database to find personal information such as a Social Security number and date of birth.

In its first 11 days of operation, Oct. 1 through Friday, HealthSource RI fielded 62,000 unique website visits. Of these visitors, about 5,500 started accounts (created a username and password) and 1,698 completed their applications and selected a health insurance plan. These numbers were released Saturday by Christine C. Ferguson, director of the agency. HealthSource RI is not saying how many of the 1,698 who completed applications are small businesses (a key focus of the exchange) nor how many qualified for Medicaid.

A 12-year old Rhode Island boy named Joseph Lyssikato was suspended for three days and barred from going on a school trip to Salem, Massachusetts after a gun-shaped key chain a bit larger than a quarter fell out of his backpack at school. According to WPBF.com, the key chain fell out of Lyssikato's backpack while he was at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry. "Another boy then picked it up and began showing it off." Lyssikato's mother said, "The [other] boy was the one waving it or showing it to other kids. Not Joseph. Joseph wasn't doing that." She...

On Tuesday, an official in Pennsylvania's Montgomery County made a decision that he said would put him "on the right side of history and the law." He decided that he would issue a same-sex marriage license to anyone who wanted it. In Pennsylvania, same-sex marriage is illegal, but Register of Wills Bruce Hanes said in a press release that he made his "own analysis of the law." He also noted that the state's attorney general announced on July 11 that she would not defend that state's gay marriage ban against a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union. At...

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee (shown) has vetoed a bill that would have authorized the state to offer a “Choose Life” license plate to raise funds for a faith-based crisis pregnancy center in the state. The governor cited the First Amendment's supposed separation of church and state mandate that he insisted prohibited the state government from involving itself in such a campaign. The measure, which was approved by the Democrat-controlled state legislature earlier this month, would have allowed half of the $40 cost of the vehicle plates to go to Providence-based CareNet, a Christian crisis pregnancy center. Supporters said the...

The New Jersey Attorney General has indicted fifteen defendants for their alleged roles in a multi-million dollar heroin trafficking ring which supplied wholesalers throughout the northeast as reported by Christopher Baxter for The Star-Ledger. The accused ringleader is Dominican national Segundo Garcia who illegally re-entered the United States following his deportation on a drug conviction according to authorities. Dominican drug trafficking organizations -- both in the Dominican Republic and in North America -- increasingly have been appearing on law enforcement's radar screen for their involvement as distributors for the Mexican drug cartels. Last summer the feds busted 11 suspects in...

June Goodhue says she’s known about the rock since she and her late husband moved to North Kingstown’s Pojac Point in 1952. Sitting in shallow water, the 8-foot-long boulder sported unusual markings that were typically visible only at extreme low tide. Goodhue said she heard people say the markings might be ancient runic characters left by Viking or Nordic explorers. Even so, Goodhue, who is now 89, says she didn’t give much thought to the significance of what people call the Narragansett Rune Stone or Quidnessett Rock. That is, until a week or so before Christmas 2011 when her neighbor...

Governor Palin wrote the following in response to the latest scandal coming from the Obama administration’s State Deptartment.Via Facebook: Outrageous. Once again the cover-up is worse than the “crime.” Secretary of State John Kerry WAS on his boat while Egypt fell into turmoil resulting in an overthrow of its new government ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood that the Obama Administration had so recently supported and may still support. (That, however, we do not know because President Obama’s absolutely dithering foreign policies, his "leading from behind," and his benign statements on the Muslim Brotherhood make no sense to sensible people.)The State...

Secretary of State John Kerry spent time lounging around on his yacht Wednesday while the Egyptian military was deposing their country's democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi, according to various reports. When Kerry was first spotted on his yatch, called "Isabel," near his vacation home in Nantucket, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called the report "completely inaccurate" saying that the Secretary of State had been "working all day and on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt," according to CBS News. Psaki even went so far as to deny that Kerry was even on the boat.

... The setting is what makes it so eyeroll-worthy. If Kerry had been seen at a barbecue, no one would bat an eye. But on board a $7 million yacht? It just doesn't seem like he's working hard. The incident fits a pattern for Kerry: a strange penchant for foppish gaffes involving water sports. First, of course, there was the epic television ad that George W. Bush ran against Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. Using footage of Kerry windsurfing and comparing his zig-zagging to a supposed propensity to change his positions... Then fast-forward to 2010, when then-Senator Kerry admitted...

<p>Complete Title: "The picture that proves Secretary of State John Kerry HAS been out on his boat while Egypt plunges into chaos - after his spokesman denied he been sailing in Nantucket"</p> <p>John Kerry's spokesman has admitted that the Secretary of State did go sailing off Nantucket as the Egyptian President was ousted from power, after pictures emerged of him out on the water on July 4.</p>

Good news everyone. While Egypt (the country we just sent F16s to) was experiencing a coup this week, Secretary of State John Kerry was boating in Nantucket. Photo courtesy of the Boston Herald: First, State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki (who also worked as a spokesman for the Obama campaign) denied Kerry was in Nantucket despite multiple reports, sitings and a Kerry motorcade traffic jam. Kerry spokesperson Jen Psaki denied the report. “Since his plane touched down in Washington at 4 am, Secretary Kerry was working all day and on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt,” Psaki said in...

Secretary of State John Kerry was on his boat briefly on Wednesday, contrary to an earlier denial by the State Department, but was there only briefly and did not conduct official business while on board. “While he was briefly on his boat on Wednesday, Secretary Kerry worked around the clock all day including participating in the president’s meeting with his national security council," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday. Kerry also held calls "with Norwegian Foreign Minister Eade,Qatari Foreign Minister al-Attiyah, Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu, Egyptian Constitution Party President ElBaradei and five calls Ambassador Patterson on that day alone and since...

OK, this is really shocking: a Heritage Foundation economist [Dr. Salim Furth] has been accused of presenting false, deliberately misleading data and analysis to the Senate Budget Committee.What’s so shocking? Not the false, misleading data and analysis — that’s SOP at Heritage. Remember the disappearing forecast of 2.8 percent unemployment under the Ryan plan, and various other Heritage escapades? What’s shocking is that they got called on it, in real time.The claim in particular, by the way, is widely popular on the right; it’s the claim that there isn’t any real austerity in Europe. Wonkbook goes through some of the...

...The man once quietly referred to in the Senate hallways as “The Missing Linc” is about to get really clever this week and preserve his re-election hopes by becoming a Democrat. Because surely there aren’t any ambitious Democrats in Rhode Island who would consider primarying a party-switching governor who rates a few points north of Kim Jong Un....

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has notified senior Democratic Party officials that he intends to switch his party registration and join the Democratic Party, multiple sources familiar with Chafee’s decision told POLITICO. Chafee, a former GOP senator elected as an independent in 2010, has struggled with low approval ratings and faces a difficult reelection fight in 2014.

Mr./Madam President, every week we’re here I try to remind this body of the damage that carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans, try to awaken us to our duty.  I’ve done it thirty-three times now.  I’ve tried to kick out the underpinnings of any argument the deniers could stand on. I’ve kicked out the scientific denial argument, which properly belongs in the category of falsehood.  I’ve kicked out the economic denial argument, pointing out that in a proper market the costs of carbon must be in the price of carbon.  I tried to kick out the religious denial...

While many Americans were tuned into news coverage of the massive damage from tornadoes ravaging the state of Oklahoma, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural disasters. “So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.